ESPN and Outbrain Team Up on Multi-Year, Global Deal

What do you get when the undisputed leader in sports and the largest discovery engine in the world team up?

A legion of sports fans who will get even more personalized access to their favorite digital content.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce an exclusive multi-year deal with ESPN that will see Outbrain Engage become the discovery engine recommending content to their global audience and providing additional programming insights to drive digital performance.

We see data as a powerful ally in helping publishers navigate shifting user demand. With the right tools and actionable insight, it can help publishers serve their content more efficiently to meet that shifting demand, which is why Outbrain Engage now means more than just engagement and revenue for publishers; it means analysis of 6.9 billion bits of data increasingly at their fingertips. It also means ESPN can use data to drive performance, not just on desktop, but on their mobile products as well.

It’s also worth noting that up to this point, Engage has largely been a tool for business development, product and editorial divisions within publisher organizations. With the ESPN deal, that is changing too. ESPN will be the first to leverage Engage to help their sales division offer placements across all their products.

In a story published to Adweek, ESPN Customer Marketing and Sales president Ed Erhardt commented, “This gives our sales team a new avenue by which to tap into the sponsored content marketplace. We look forward to bringing these solutions to our global customer base.”

The opening of our platform to more users and functions at publisher organizations represents a new stride in the development of our product, one that we’re particularly excited about. As publishers complete their transformations into digital-first companies, breaking traditional silos is proving to be an important factor to thrive in a challenging economic environment. Our new collaboration with ESPN takes us one step closer to fully realizing that vision.

Sarah Gavin

Sarah is Outbrain's European Marketing Director and is responsible for all marketing and communications activity across Outbrain's growing EU territories. Former VP of Marketing & Communications at AOL/The Huffington Post. Sarah was part of AOL’s senior European leadership team and has more than 15 years experience working for some of the world's most reputable companies. Prior to AOL Europe, Sarah was VP Communications International, AOL and a member of Bebo's global leadership team, reporting to CEO, Joanna Shields. In this capacity she was tasked with developing and driving the global corporate/consumer marcoms strategy for the hot youth lifestyle brand alongside AIM, ICQ and number of AOL’s established brands and consumer offerings. Prior to Bebo, Sarah worked for a boutique communications agency where she was part of the management team and headed-up the corporate and B2B division of the company, supporting a wide range of high profile global brands.